What Happens If Your Bank Account Is Hacked And Money Stolen?

The five things that you lot can do to recover money stolen from your bank account are based on an incident experienced by my mother. An corporeality of 50,000 was stolen from her bank account. The rest of the post narrates the incident.

My mother (a homemaker) received a call on 14^thursday Feb 2017 from a person pretending to be a managing director of the banking company (bank's name not revealed for privacy reasons) she has her business relationship in. The caller tricked her into revealing her ATM card details such every bit the card number, expiry date, and CVV number (3 digits printed on the dorsum side of the menu). And then the caller asked my mother to reveal a ready of OTPs (one time password) sent to her registered mobile phone (conspicuously, the criminal had initiated online transactions using the card's details for which he needed the OTP). A few minutes later, an amount of near Rs. 50,000/- was debited from her account. By the time she informed me near the incident, it was besides late.

This particular incident is known as a phishing attack – where the assaulter tricks the victim into revealing their confidential data.

What I did immediately

i. Reported the incident to the bank. The account was frozen and the ATM card was blocked.

2. Noted down the details of all the transactions that took place at the time (there were 4). These include the engagement, time, amount, merchant'southward name, and others.

iii. Lodged an FIR in the local police station; shared the details of the transactions.

4. Contacted every merchant whose name was included in the transactions. I reached out to them via their Twitter accounts, emails, and customer care number. Informed them that the debit bill of fare used in the transaction was used fraudulently, without my mother's authorisation. They asked for sure details to verify my claim. These included the debit carte du jour number (commencement iv and last 4 digits), date and fourth dimension of the transaction.

5. Reported the instance to Cyber Crime Cell Mumbai partition (mumbai@mahapolice.gov.in). They replied saying that they do non take straight complaints and suggested me to lodge an FIR with my local police (which I already did) who will then forrard the case to the Cyber Crime Cell.

What happened shortly afterward
Iii merchants were involved in the transactions. By 'involved' I mean that the criminal used their services (due east-wallet) to steal the money from my female parent's bank account.

1 of these merchants turned out to exist immensely helpful. Later having verified my claim, they were kind enough to revert the transaction that the criminal made using their e-wallet. The amount was near Rs. 20,000. And so, what might have happened in this case is, the coin did not get transferred elsewhere or used in any style before I reported the instance.

I was, all the same, not then lucky in recovering the rest of the coin (Rs. 30,000). Reason – the services were already delivered. Meaning, in i case, the coin got transferred to a sure bank account and in another case, the coin was used to purchase movie tickets. These two merchants, however, helped me with some in-depth information of the transactions such as the IP address of the figurer used during the transactions, the depository financial institution account where the money was transferred to, date, time, etc. I shared these details with the police and the Cyber Crime Cell, just in case.

Can the bank assist you recover the loss? The bitter truth – No
Banks have always been clear about their warnings to customers nigh not disclosing any personal or cyberbanking information over telephone call, SMS, or e-mail no matter what. Hence, in this detail case, the depository financial institution holds my the account holder answerable for whatsoever happened. In short, it would be unwise to expect that the bank will somehow recover the loss.

How to protect yourself from such scams
Criminals are making coin because they are smart. They know how to lure their victims into their trap. And then, it is up to us how we prevent ourselves from getting trapped.

Brainwash everyone in your family and friend circle nearly phishing attacks and other such online scams. Almost of time, we assume that these incidences cannot happen with us but you never know.

Never give out any personal information (including financial) to anyone over a phone call, SMS, or email. The caller may sound 18-carat, polite, professional person or harmless but that is how scammers are trained – to trick their victims. Call back, banks never call or write to their customers asking for their banking details.

If you lot receive a call from your depository financial institution (or anyone pretending to be from a reputed visitor) request for your personal or banking company details, disconnect the call. Report the number to your bank. If you are using Truecaller app on your phone, tag the number as 'Fraud' so that it gets updated in the app's database and other Truecaller users know near it.

If you tin can identity the number's operator (Vodafone, Airtel, Idea, etc.), write to them or Tweet them informing most the phone call. If they are diligent enough, they might blacklist the number from their database.

Every bit of today, I am nonetheless following up with those to whom I had written seeking help in bringing the criminal to justice. And I will keep doing and so. I'll update this post if I come across something positive. For at present, I promise this post helps our readers educate their family and friends nigh such threats and how to avoid them. Stay safe!

Also read: How to recover your coin if your banking company business relationship is hacked or your card details are stolen